Paladin Leveling Guide In Lost Ark: The Right Way To Level

Warriors have been the powerhouse of MMORPGs for ages, often featuring a range of different builds and skills. Lost Ark offers a ton of impressive and unique abilities with its highly sought-after Paladin class, but it will take some time to see his full potential.

Paladin Class Overview

The Paladin is an advanced class within the Warrior main class, and while he is undeniably strong, he also offers some extremely useful support skills. Most of the Paladin class’s holy skills can be outfitted with his support abilities, which can trigger upon hitting enemies.

His abilities can also have massive AoE damage as well, so the party will almost be guaranteed to receive the bonus. He often outshines the Bard class (the only other supportive class Lost Ark) since he offers a wonderful balance between support and damage.

Paladin Abilities

The community is currently split between damage and support for the Paladin class. But, since his damage is lower compared to pure damage classes, most players believe that the support build is better overall.

However, you may need to chop and change between builds, depending on your level, your enemies, and of course, your preferences. His skills are divided into two groups – yellow for support (Holy) and blue for damage (Punish).

Paladin’s have a Piety meter, which can activate either Sacred Executioner or Holy Aura at max charge. Sacred Executioner enhances damage skills, while Holy Aura increases you and your allies’ attack.

Paladin Awakening Skills

Unlocking the Paladin’s Awakening Skills will take a lot of time, as you will only be able to gain access to these skills after you hit level 50 and have completed the Main Questline. You will need to complete the chain of quests until you reach Vern city, where you speak to Beatrice and be asked to visit her in Trixion.

Below are the Paladin’s Awakening Skills:

Alithanes’ Judgement

The Alithanes’ Judgement Awakening skill launches a giant barrier onto your allies, which will be based on a significant percentage of your max health.

Light

The Light Awakening skill is a damage skill, that can later explode to deal more damage and inflict a fairly high stagger onto enemies.

Paladin Leveling Guide

Since the Paladin class offers both support and damage abilities or skills, he is incredibly versatile and can be useful in a wide range of scenarios. Create two skill setups as you level up, and try to create a build for the Chaos Dungeon and Cube and a separate build for Raids after level 50.

Gear & Combat Stats

Focus on equipping the highest gear item level possible as you level up the Paladin, focusing on Agility for increased movement speed and on reduced casting time for faster cooldowns. Prioritize the Crit and Swiftness Combat Stats, as this will help increase the Paladin’s clear speed and overall damage.

Best Class Engravings

Class Engravings can only be unlocked after quite a while of grinding. The Paladin class has two engravings, one for either build and approach.

Judge

The Judge Engraving is more DPS-focused and will be a better option if you’re focusing on damage. This is typically more suitable throughout the leveling process as you could kill enemies much faster.

Below are the benefits of Judge:

• Enhances damage skills by 25%
• Increases gauge acquisition

Blessing

The Blessing Engraving is more suited to a support build. This may be more viable at the endgame, where the Paladin’s support skills are significantly stronger.

Below are the benefits of Blessed:

• Reduces damage taken by 20%
• Heal periodically

Generic Engravings

The type of generic Engravings for Paladin will depend on whether you go damage or support. It’s typically more useful to start with damage-focused Engravings and switch to support-based Engravings at higher levels.

• Damage Build: Cursed Doll, Grudge, Adrenaline, Raid Leader
• Support Build: Awakening, Specialist

Continue The Main Story

If you really want to gain levels as quickly as possible, continuing the main story and quests will be incredibly advantageous. There will be a ton of XP waiting throughout the journey as you defeat enemies and mobs, plus completing each quest will reward players with bonus XP.

Continuing the Main Questline and the story will be beneficial to any class at any stage of the game, as it will grant players some solid rewards in addition to unlocking some awesome activities in-game. Use your Blessed aura while leveling for damage reduction and HoT (healing over time).

Start off with the orange main quest, following one after another, and skip all of the side quests at the beginning. Begin clearing out all of the quests in the region once you sail to Arthetine, and you should already be heading to level 50.

Finish off the grind to level 50 by completing dungeons for some more XP. You can always go back and complete side quests afterward, but this approach will afford quick XP in addition to plenty of other advantages.

Skill Point Allocation

Allocate Skill Points to acquire Tripods for the Paladin’s most effective skills. Below are the most significant and useful Skill Tripods and their character levels:

• Level 12: Charge (4 points) for mobility to traverse around the map and dungeons.
• Level 15-16: Flash Thrust (20 points) for a low cooldown skill with decent area coverage and damage.
• Level 19-20: Punishment (20 points) for an early game single target skill that does a lot of damage for early levels.
• Level 25-26: Flash Thrust (48 points) for more damage.
• Level 30-32: Executor’s Sword (48 points) for more single target damage or AoE clearing, depending on the Tier 3 Tripod chosen.
• Level 36: Holy Explosion (20 points) for more AoE density clearing.
• Level 40-41: Holy Sword (48 points, remove 16 points from Holy Explosion) for a high single target burst with some linear AoE.
• Level 45: Holy Explosion (back up to 20 points) and upgrade Execution of Justice (20 points) for more AoE clearing.
• Level 48-49: Holy Explosion (48 points) maxed out for more damage increase on the AoE nuke.

You can spend Skill Points on Dash Slash as well, as this will help out a ton throughout the leveling process. These skills will allow increased mobility when dismounted or in dungeon areas – just make sure to reallocate the points to Main Skills when it’s necessary.

Ditch The Support At Low Levels

The Paladin class offers a blend of support and damage skills, but many of his support skills will only be more useful as you near the end game. Paladins are almost expected to act as support in endgame raids and dungeons, but support is not as meaningful earlier on.

This is since the Paladin’s supportive skills will only be significantly stronger once you gain access to more skill points – which will only happen after you start grinding from level 50 to level 60. So, instead of focusing on support skills earlier on, just try to level up as soon as possible.

Opting for this sort f approach will result in the Paladin having an extra 30% damage as opposed to the 10% shield and additional supportive buffs to himself and his teammates. But, the extra damage will come in handy as he will need to for himself earlier on.

Instant Death Holy Skills

While melee abilities suit many similar classes, the Paladin’s melee abilities can slow him down – and, even put him in some unexpected predicaments at times. The Paladin may offer some support skills, but these are generally in the form of buffs or shielding.

As a result, there isn’t really a consistent way for the Paladin to heal himself or his allies. For this reason, focus on skills that deal high damage earlier on since this will help end enemy encounters much faster.

The following skills will help defeat standard enemies quickly:

• Sword of Justice
• Godsent Law

Paladin Gameplay Tips

Although every gamer’s experience while leveling the Paladin class will differ based on various factors, there are still a few basic factors to consider throughout the leveling process.

Keep A Distance (At Times)

Dodging incoming attacks isn’t as much of a worry with the Paladin, as most of the skills have Push Immunity. But, he will still need to dodge high damage-dealing attacks or hard hits from Bosses.

If you’re in an instance where there are swarms of enemies that are taking a while to defeat, think about taking a step back. The Paladin class is tough as nails but he doesn’t always belong in the heat of the action like other melee classes.

Let the full-on melee classes do what they do best, as they have the means to actively dodge attacks or outright withstand them. It can be tempting to try and mix ranged and melee attacks with the Paladin class, but new players should try and focus on 4 or 5 Holy skills instead earlier on.

Killing Groups with Paladin

The Paladin class deals a decent amount of AoE damage, which is available from the very start and can accelerate the leveling process. As a result, it’s generally more effective to try and group enemies together before attacking, as this will deal damage to each enemy all at once.

The best Paladin skill for enemies at the beginning of the game is Spin Slash, followed by Flash Thrust. As you near endgame enemies, Wrath of God and Holy Explosion followed by a well-timed Holy Sword attack would be ideal.

Boss Fights with Paladin

Although the Paladin offers a ton of AoE damage, single-target damage can be a bit trickier. Single-target damage is still important to build, as you will need this sort of attack with tougher enemies and bosses.

The Paladin can still deal some decent single-target damage with the right Tripods. Specific Tripods, such as Weak Point Detection, can really help out – especially when taking on Dungeon Bosses.

In the earlier stages, Spin Slash and Flash Thrust would be ideal, as well as frontal attack skills. Later Bosses can be taken down with Flash Thrust, topped with Punishment, Executor’s Sword, and Holy Sword.

Frontal Attack Style With Paladin

Unlike many classes that can do with a blend of attack styles, the Paladin typically does better with frontal attacks. Punishment, Holy Sword, and Executor’s Sword all have Front Attack modifiers, and attacking enemies head-on will automatically increase the damage dealt by 20%.

Paladin Movement Speed

Use the Paladin’s Charge and Dash Slash to move around the map quickly. To speed it up even further, press ‘Spacebar’ at the end of each skill to cancel the animation and move slightly faster overall.

The Paladin may be tricky to get the hang of since he flaunts such a range of unique skills and abilities. Try and start off by focusing on his damage abilities, and build him up with his stronger support skills towards the endgame.